Jim Fuller was a connoisseur—of automobiles, the automobile business, food, wine, and life itself.

Jim Fuller was CEO of Volkswagen of America, but more importantly, he was my friend. He was a genuine car guy and a serious foodie—­criteria that rank high on my list of qualifications for a solid friendship.

It was a few days before Christmas in 1988. I had flown to New York for a meeting and checked in to the Hotel InterContinental. I walked into my room and flipped on the television set. Pan Am Flight 103 had crashed on Lockerbie, Scotland, on its way to JFK. I called my office in Ann Arbor and got my assistant, Harriet Stemberger. “­Harriet, a Pan Am 747 just crashed in Scotland. Call everybody. Find out everything you can. We must have known people on that airplane who were headed for Detroit.”

Harriet called back that night. Jim Fuller and Lou Marengo of VWoA were on that flight. No survivors.

A few days later, at the request of Jim’s wife, Georgeann, I delivered his eulogy to a packed house at Christ Church Cranbrook in Bloomfield Hills. The church was filled with family, friends, automotive heavies, and VW dealers. I wanted those people to leave that great vaulted space feeling Jim’s warmth and humanity. I swallowed hard, and told them about my friend, Jim Fuller:

“The old preacher who instructs us in the book of Ecclesiastes says, ‘Go, eat your bread with enjoyment, and drink your wine with a merry heart; for God has already approved of what you do.’

“We know that Jim Fuller was an intensely religious man, and I can tell you from considerable personal experience that he followed that particular biblical injunction to the letter.

“I have consoled myself, over the past two weeks, with the thought that he had probably just gotten into the champagne and caviar when Pan Am 103 disappeared from the radar screens over Scotland.

“Ecclesiastes also tells us that man’s fate does not depend on righteous or wicked conduct but is an inscrutable mystery that remains hidden in God. We are here, this morning, in an attempt to reconcile ourselves to the inscrutability of that mystery.

“Jim Fuller was a consummate salesman—that is to say, an eternal optimist—and I’m certain that any thoughts he may have had that evening, concerning the life that he was about to leave so abruptly, would have been happy ones.

“He was proud of the wife and children he loved so much, as he was proud of their accomplishments, and he was absolutely certain that, no matter how difficult Volkswagen’s situation might be in North America, he had the team, the tools, and the talent to turn it around. Life, as they say, was his oyster.

“Jim and I shared an amazing number of speaker’s platforms over the past few years, and a not-too surprising number of spectacular dinner tables, because, just as he was purpose-built by his creator to run an automobile company, he was also endowed with a natural and easy grace in the kitchen.

“He was a connoisseur in the very best sense of that word, and the people around him benefited enormously from his high standards, whether the subject at hand was automobiles, the automobile business, food, wine, or life itself.

“I’m sure that my experience with Jim Fuller was like that of any number of people whose paths crossed his in the automotive world. He called regularly. He took a lively interest in my work and my life, and he could be disarmingly frank about his own situation.

“We talked about the business, we gossiped about personalities, and we made bets involving contests of skill between Boston’s professional athletes and those of the Motor City—bets which I invariably won because his love for Boston and New England clouded his judgment.

“His friends in the business will remember him striding into press conferences, addressing packed auditoriums at dealer conventions, tearing around racetracks in his company’s products, and always pushing his associates to make sure that every ‘i’ was dotted and every ‘t’ was crossed—generally with a grin and a wisecrack.

“For most of us, death comes as a tedious series of component failures; little indicator lights winking out one by one as various systems break down.

“The dozens of Fuller-watchers here among us today will not consider it inappropriate that Jim Fuller’s departure from this life was characterized by a blaze of energy that lit up the sky and could be seen for miles.”

BP, the company that nearly destroyed the Gulf of Mexico, has been identified as a key player in the release of Jim Fuller’s assassin from a prison in Scotland. In return, I want BP to use its corporate clout, its negotiating skills, and its political influence to free Jim Fuller and all the unfortunate innocents who were murdered on Pan Am 103 that evening. I want my friend back, and merely cutting my BP credit card in half and tossing it doesn’t feel like enough.